


Drown Together

by FlyingDragons_CrowsWhoGlitter



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst Hurt/comfort, Avengers as family, Cancer, Chronic Illness, Clint Barton Feels, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Gen, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Phil Coulson, Sick Clint Barton, family help, sickness au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 17:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15976814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingDragons_CrowsWhoGlitter/pseuds/FlyingDragons_CrowsWhoGlitter
Summary: “I’m gonna die from this aren’t I?”Clint is about to fight one of the hardest battles know to any creature. This battle field is fraught with landmines and there is only so much anyone can do but wait.





	Drown Together

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so just a heads up: this is my first post ever. I say this only to warn you of formatting errors and to request that you let me know of them/how to fix them when some undoubtedly show up. :) Other than that, I have edited to the best of my ability/had friends go through it but criticism is quite welcome(as I love to improve)! No guarantees that I will be able to fix it soon/before I post the next chapter, I apologize in advance, I am a more than full time college student and I don't want to take too much of an eternity between posts. I am extremely excited in advance for you reading this and I will get the next chapter up as soon as I am able!!

It’s been exactly 76 hours since Clint’s last round of antibiotics ended and he already feels like the pneumonia has remade it’s home in his chest. It seemed like his chest hadn’t quit hurting for 3 months and he was beginning to get persistent headaches that Advil didn’t seem to touch. Everytime he thought he’d finally gotten rid of this stupid pneumonia it came back with a vengeance. His coughs had apparently gotten bad enough that his vocal cords finally couldn’t recover, his voice was still hoarse from the last pneumonia battle. Today he was going  _ back _ to his SHIELD doctor to try and see if there was something, other than yet another type of antibiotics, that would at least allow him to go back to consistent active duty. He’d only been on assignments that lasted less than three days for the duration of this aggravation.

He was on the third, and top, floor of the New York SHIELD base, barely waving to the desk staff as he passed. It had been less than fifteen days since he’d been in here last and he knew that his doctor wasn’t busy, once Clint had told him the current problem, he’d cleared his schedule, mentioning something about having a hunch and to plan on spending a few hours in medbay. He had _not_ mentioned that he felt Coulson was needed. This requirement was, however, quite apparent because Coulson was waiting in the Doctor’s room already. The situation felt rather ominous at first but the entire afternoon turned out to simply be full of test after test; taking blood, checking counts of certain types of cells, taking tissue samples, specifically from his lungs and surrounding areas and investigating his recent, apparently possibly related, 7 pound weight loss. Kylen, his doctor, said that he, "had a hunch" but he also had been reluctant to say anything more detailing his thoughts until he got confirmation from the lab regarding Clint’s test results. Clint was excited, mostly, about the test results. His doctor had seemed hopeful that it was just some sort of mutated virus that the labs would whip up a cure to finally zap, quick and easy.

**~~~~~~~~~~~**

**3 days later:**

Clint had to go to the third, top, floor of the sprawling headquarters to get to medical. When he arrived he was directed straight to the clinic section. There were a few coughs, sneezes and various quiet conversations echoing through the hallway as he walked towards room 235, where his doctor had said to meet. Clint caught snippets of conversations and a bright burst of laughter from down the hall. The lemon antiseptic, vivid in the atmosphere, stung the tip of his tongue. He felt the chill of the doorknob beneath the palm of his hand, and noted that he actually wasn’t feeling nervous like he had thought he might. After recovering from yet another bout of pneumonia he was really hoping his life was finally going to start leveling out again. Hopefully he was finally going to be able to be on consistent active duty again. However, when Clint opened the door room 235 became instantly silent and at the first sight of the body language of the two occupants, Coulson and Kylen, he desperately wanted to hear the shiny white floor screech beneath his shoes in a hasty retreat. His good mood followed that line of thought. Clint, however, went over and sat on the crinkly, paper-covered table, putting on a bored facade while his stomach began to inch its way upwards towards his throat. Phil Coulson is my handler and closest thing I have to a dad. He was dressed in a freshly-pressed, wolf gray suit with a Navy tie around his neck and leaning back against the counter in the far corner as if trying to subtly brace for the impact of some ginormous, invisible weight. The doctor, sitting in the office chair opposite of the table, didn’t help Clint’s confidence either, as the doctor’s face was set in a grim line like he was about to inform Clint that he had bubonic plague or something equally as ludicrous. Clint didn’t think the tension in the room could’ve been cut with a boning knife, it felt so thick. 

Finally, after what felt like half an eternity, Kylen spoke up.  “All of your test results came back, your pneumonia has disappeared again.” he paused clicking and unclicking his pen uselessly against his clipboard. “And you haven’t developed chronic bronchitis like we had half suspected,”

“Good!” Because, that was good wasn’t it? Shouldn’t he be happy about that? Why did Kylen look like he was about to deliver some horrible news? 

Phil was looking at the doctor with a dark veil on his gaze and a quirked eyebrow, waiting for the professional to elaborate.

“I’m sorry I have to tell you this,” Clint’s brain barely had time to register any meaning of those words before his doctor charged on.  “You have stage IIIB Bronchogenic Carcinoma, or, stage III Lung Cancer.”

Clint just stared at his doctor with glazed eyes mouth uselessly flopping open and closed. The information went in one ear, swirled around his head and was promptly thrown out the other side, like if Clint avoided processing the information his problem would disappear. Clint looked over and saw Phil trying to pick his jaw and composure up off the floor. He was just as thunderstruck as his charge. Then, suddenly, it was like the room had been turned into a fishbowl Phil and Clint were stuck in the middle, gaping like guppies. Clint felt like he was drowning. He had lung cancer? How was that possible? I don’t smoke, I’m healthy, or I thought I was. So many confused emotions were fighting for precedence within his mind. Clint felt like he had just been thrown into the Bermuda Triangle and told to swim to shore without a life-vest. Terrified was beginning to win. Then Phil seemed to finally finish collecting his composure because his face reformed into soft lines, lips turned down slightly at the edges and he began to ask Kylen questions.

“What kinds of options do we have for treatment and what is the prognosis?” Clint was numb as his doctor answered those questions and the seemingly hundreds more that Phil asked him. 

Kylen told them that Clint’s cancer was inoperable because it was too close to too many delicate tissues, like his bronchial tubes. Clint’s prognosis was about 15 months. Kylen did explain, however, that because Clint was healthy, he doesn’t smoke and it was caught they had the ability to get treatments in place that may be able to extend that time. 

After answering the basic questions Kylen told the two to go home and educate themselves on Lung Cancer as much as they could. He gave them a few websites to start with that he said usually had pretty reliable information. He said he wanted them, specifically Clint, to have a list of specific questions and a few suggestions by the time the genetic model for his cancer came back from the S.H.I.E.L.D. labs. They would be back for that appointment in two days. 

Clint and Phil left the clinic room as soon as the doctor left. Clint headed straight down to the parking garage level, marching like a concentration camp prisoner. He took the tiled stairs swiftly but one at a time, his head down, staring at the little sandpaper strip on each step as it passed by beneath his feet. His head was buzzing, he didn’t know where he wanted to be he just knew that it wasn’t here, like his airways, the building began to feel like it was closing in on him. He hadn’t even realized Phil was trailing along behind him until he had raced through the door that lead into the parking garage just a little too quickly. All the physical exertion caught up to Clint all at once and he found that his lungs wouldn’t cooperate. His vision began getting dark around the edges and he pitched forward, nearly redecorating his forehead in sticky crimson. Phil grabbed Clint’s arm just before his head slammed into the concrete and Phil helped Clint sit on the floor in a somewhat more voluntary and comfortable manner. Then Phil just sat down next to Clint, like it was the most normal thing in the world to sit down in the middle of the bright yellow lines of a parking space crosswalk in the middle of a ginormous underground parking garage.

When Clint finally caught his breath, He turned to Phil and asked him, because he had to hear it out loud, “I’m gonna die from this aren’t I?”

Phil looked at Clint with the most sincere, empathetic expression Clint had ever seen and said, “I don’t know. But we’re gonna do our best to make it through this, as long as we possibly can, together.” 

Seeing that look on his face and hearing the words he spoke echo softly in the empty and otherwise quiet parking garage Clint broke down in tears; this most definitely was not going to be quick and easy.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you ever so much for reading!! Comments/Criticism/Kudos are majorly appreciated! Much love sending your way!! ;D


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